Few actors have either been fortunate or typecast enough to give rise to their very own bespoke genre, but Jason Statham is definitely one of them. When people see his name attached to a movie, there’s a 99% chance they know exactly what they’re going to get.
That’s fairly ironic in itself when his road to silver screen stardom was hardly conventional, with Statham at various points being one of the top-ranked competitive divers in the world who represented Great Britain at the Commonwealth Games before he shilled questionable merchandise from market stalls in London and tried his hand at professional modelling.
Guy Ritchie may have opened the doors to everything that followed when he gave Statham his first screen gig in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, but it was Luc Besson who inadvertently curated his persona when he cast the actor in his maiden leading role in an action flick with 2002’s The Transporter.
Ever since then, Statham has been synonymous with mid-budget ass-kickers, where he growls his way through the story and utilises his martial arts skills to reduce disposable goons to human wreckage. Bonus points if the movies in question have either a one-word title or are prefixed with ‘The’, which has become the easiest identifier of a standard Statham jaunt.
The Transporter got two sequels, The Meg got one, and The Expendables got three, not to mention Revolver, London, Crank, Chaos, War, The Mechanic, Blitz, Safe, Parker, Hummingbird, Homefront, and The Beekeeper. He’s become a one-man brand unto himself, and when explaining his singular exploits to The Guardian, Statham came up with a bizarre analogy that actually makes a great deal of sense.
“You can’t have a sushi restaurant and then put cheese on toast on the menu because they’d go, ‘Why did you do that? We came here to eat sushi,’” he said. “The dilemma is that you have to do something that people want to see.” Fortunately, Statham knows exactly what that is and how it’s tied to his ongoing appeal.
For instance, Statham understands that “people aren’t gonna put money on the table” if he were to attach himself to a script about “a depressed doctor whose estranged wife doesn’t want to be with him no more.” On the other hand, if a screenplay necessitates the actor to “shoot someone in the fucking feet,” then financial backers will put their hand into their pocket because that’s what viewers expect to see.
That neatly accounts for why intimate drama, awards-baiting biopics, and in-depth character studies have never been on Statham’s radar. He knows what he’s good at and what he has to do to ensure his movie career continues to thrive, and he’s appreciative of the fact he’s been allowed to do it for so long. In short, “It’s showbusiness,” and it’s kept him constantly working for over a quarter of a century.